Benguet (Cordillera)

Benguet is where the Philippines grows its best-known arabica. In the pine-covered Cordillera of northern Luzon, small farmers have grown the old Typica variety since the 1870s, mostly in backyards and on small plots. The coffee is scarce, prized and in decline, which is why Slow Food lists it in its Ark of Taste of endangered foods.

The short version

• Typica arabica, introduced in the 1870s.
• About 1,600 metres at Atok, under pine and alder.
• Mostly natural-processed, because water is scarce.
• Harvest from about November.
• The Cordillera grew 1,003 tonnes of green coffee in 2020, 3.3% of the national crop.
• Slow Food Ark of Taste, as an endangered heritage food.

What does Benguet coffee taste like?

Official descriptions are general. Slow Food says the altitude and cloud cover at Atok produce richly flavoured beans, and PCAARRD, the government’s agricultural research council, says arabica from Benguet and Mountain Province is comparable to quality beans from South America. PIDS calls Benguet arabica the benchmark for Philippine speciality coffee. The best evidence is competition results: in the 2018 Philippine Coffee Quality Competition, Oliver Oliem of the Atok Arabica Coffee Growers Marketing Cooperative, in Caliking, won the arabica category with 87.06 points, and Benguet coffees took three of the top six places, SunStar reported. In 2025 Rodyio Tacdoy, a 22-year-old farmer from La Trinidad who had learned anaerobic fermentation, won the national arabica category with 84.38 points; his 117 kilos sold at auction for P9,900 a kilo, a national record, according to the Manila Bulletin and the Philippine Star. No tasting notes were published for the 2025 lot, but earlier winners’ notes were:

Competition	Entry	Place	Tasting notes
2018 Philippine Coffee Quality Competition	Oliver Oliem, Caliking, Atok	1st, arabica (87.06)	Apricot, lemongrass, pomelo, oolong tea, the aroma of a rose
2024 Cordillera Regional Coffee Quality Competition	Tuba Benguet Coffee Growers Association	1st, arabica	Floral, mixed berries, honey, dates, raisins, stone fruit, apple, ripe banana, papaya
2024 Cordillera Regional Coffee Quality Competition	La Trinidad Arabica Coffee Producers Association	2nd, arabica	Mixed berries, apple, coconut, almond, sugarcane, honey, molasses, citrus, pomelo, tamarind, brown sugar

Sources: Zigzag Weekly; SunStar. The 2024 regional competition, the Cordillera’s first, was run by the Department of Agriculture’s rural development project with the Department of Trade and Industry; 22 arabica entries were graded and cupped. Third place went to a Sagada growers’ group, with honey, berries, lime, muscovado and caramel.

Where and how it grows

Slow Food describes Typica trees growing among pines and alders at about 1,600 metres in Atok. Arabica grows well across the Cordillera at 1,000 to 1,800 metres and 17–24 °C, PCAARRD says, and the municipality of Bakun lies at 1,200 to 2,500 metres, its agriculture officer says. Most cherries are natural-processed: hand-picked, dried on pavements and sold as dried cherries, because water is hard to come by. Where farmers have spring water they wash their coffee, sometimes sharing one wooden pulper among more than a hundred growers. Coffee buyers commit to much of the crop before the harvest starts, around November, the Philippine Coffee Board reported. In Atok, the Atok Arabica Coffee Growers Marketing Cooperative had 280 members in 2018, each hectare yielding 700 to 800 kg of coffee a year, and sells its coffee as “Atokape”, SunStar reported.

How much coffee does the Cordillera grow?

Measure, 2020	Figure
Area harvested	5,160 ha
Green coffee	1,003 t (2,006 t of dried cherries)
Share of national output	3.3%
Arabica	695 t of dried cherries (35% of the region’s crop)
Robusta	1,267 t of dried cherries
Yield	0.39 t a hectare
Bearing trees	3.44 million

Source: PSA, via the Department of Agriculture’s coffee roadmap.

The Cordillera grows more robusta than arabica: the robusta comes from lower provinces such as Kalinga. Benguet’s own output is small and specialised, much of it from backyard farms, PIDS says.

A short history

Arabica reached Benguet in 1875, when the Spanish military governor planted it in lowland gardens, where rain and low altitude held it back. In 1877 his successor, Enrique Oraa, moved it to higher ground and gave seedlings to the Igorot people. When a later governor tried to force them to grow it in 1881, communities destroyed their plantations, but a chief named Camising of Kabayan took up coffee and others followed. Coffee rust devastated the trees in 1899. The industry revived in the 20th century, faltered in the 1990s and has grown again since 2010; in 2016 the Department of Trade and Industry opened the country’s first shared processing facility and cupping laboratory for arabica at Benguet State University, Wikipedia records.

Benguet and other Philippine origins

• Coffee in the Philippines: the whole country, its four species and its imports.
• Bukidnon: the prize-winning arabica highlands of Mindanao.
• Coffee in Indonesia: the other big island coffee origin in the region.